The religious delusion and the “multiple realities” perspective

The religious delusion has not been the focus of many clinical and psychopathological studies. A possible reason could be that it cannot be easily assessed through the cognitivist research methodologies. An interesting approach is the one of the “multiple realities” (the fictional realities of literature, theatre, virtual computer world etc.), an idea recently developed by Gallagher. The cases of religious delusion are characterized by a psychopathologic process of depersonalization/transpersonalisation, by entering a particular role in a “special mystical world”; a simplified and distorted one. The paper discusses 12 cases of religious delusion from the Case Register for Psychosis Timisoara. It focuses on the role of narrativity and the process of identification with characters from the mythical narrations in delusion. It suggests the development of phenomenological existentialist research in the domain of delusion from the multiple realities perspective.